In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything but beneficial” without resurrection, while for Anselm “God and humanity are reconciled when Jesus dies, and the Resurrection tidies up.” Ignoring Israel’s history leaves the impression that “the Creator could just as well have sent his Son to reunite humanity with himself . . . without having done any of the works described in the Old Testament after the first chapter of Genesis.” Abraham, Exodus, exile and return have retained some role in the preaching and liturgical celebration of the cross, but, Jenson points out, “many powerful systems” of theology “make no use of the Old Testament except as witness to Creation and sin and as religious background for Jesus.”[1]

To those complaints I add a third that Jenson mentions but does not develop: Jesus’ death is often isolated from the life that precedes it. As with Jenson, my complaint is not about theologians who deny that Jesus lived the life depicted in the gospels; they have their reward. My complaint is against theologians for whom Jesus’ career has a minimal role in explaining how he achieves salvation. Michael Root has argued that the soteriological task is always “creation of a new version of the story” or “narrative redescription or augmentation,”[2] but the question is always: What story is being redescribed and augmented? My question can be put this way: Do traditional atonement theories work if Jesus had not been a prophet, an itinerant rabbi, healer and exorcist who collected and commissioned disciples, who disputed with and enraged scribes and Pharisees in Galilee and Jerusalem, who ate and drank with sinners and befriended outcasts? Would the gears of traditional atonement theories mesh smoothly if Jesus had remained a sinless carpenter in Nazareth until His arrest, trial, and death?

For some classic theories, the answer appears to be Yes.

Read the rest here.